Tag: love
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The Things I Romanticise vs. The Things I Actually Enjoy
I have a whole version of my life that exists only in my head. In it, I wake up at 6 a.m. without an alarm, make coffee in a ceramic mug, write in a leather journal while golden light falls across the desk, and go for a run that leaves me glowing instead of wheezing.…
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What Happens When You Stop Trying to Be Understandable to Everyone
For years I edited myself before I even opened my mouth. I’d read the room, guess what version of me it wanted, and hand that one over. With one group I was the funny one. With another, the quiet and sensible one. With family, the easy one who never caused trouble. I thought this was…
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My Current Personality Is Just a Series of Unfinished Plans
If you looked at my life from the outside, you’d think I was a very ambitious person. I have a half-finished playlist for a road trip I haven’t planned. A notes app full of titles with no bodies underneath them. A language app that sends me passive-aggressive reminders in the voice of a heartbroken owl.…
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A Very Honest Review of My Life Lately
Overall rating: three and a half stars. Would not say I’m recommending it to a friend yet, but I’m not leaving a complaint either. There’s potential. The pacing is chaotic, the plot is unclear, and the main character makes some baffling decisions, but every so often there’s a scene that makes the whole thing worth…
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Things I Never Used to Like But Have Sort of Gotten Fond Of
I need to start with a confession that would have horrified the younger me. I like cheesecake now. Genuinely, unreservedly, go-back-for-a-second-slice like it. For years I rolled my eyes at it. Too heavy, too dense, too much of a fuss over what is essentially sweet cheese. Then a few days ago I had a blueberry…
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Things I Thought I’d Have Figured Out By Now
When I was a kid, I pictured the end of my teens as a kind of finish line. Not the end of anything, just the point where the shaking stops. I imagined a version of me who woke up before the alarm, knew what she wanted to become, and knew what she wanted for dinner,…
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Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes
A few weeks ago I caught myself saying a sentence out loud and had this strange feeling of déjà vu. I was telling a friend how tired I was of my routine, how I felt stuck, how I needed to change something. She nodded the way people nod when they have heard it before. Then…
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‘What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?’
When I was 10, I said I wanted to be a doctor. I said it with total confidence, the way you say things when nobody has yet asked you to explain how. A doctor was a job that sounded important and made adults nod approvingly. Nobody asked what kind of doctor or why. I just…
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The Years That Ask Everything Of You
I keep thinking about how nobody actually prepares you for this part. The stretch of life where it feels like everything is being asked of you at the exact same time, and you’re supposed to just handle it, because apparently that’s what being an adult means. You’re supposed to pick a career. An actual direction.…
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Breathe
There is a list. You know the one. It starts early, earlier than you are ready for, and it does not stop. First it is the grades, because the grades determine everything, or so you are told at an age when you are still figuring out how to exist in a body and navigate a…
